Playwrights' Studio

Former Chairwoman

Linda McLean

Linda McLean is a multi-award winning playwright
from Scotland.

Her plays include Any Given Day (Lessa Rossy
Playwrighting Award); Strangers, Babies (Susan
Smith Blackburn prize finalist); Shimmer (Herald
Angel); One Good Beating (Best One Act
Play); Riddance (Fringe First, Herald Angel);
What Love Is; This Is Water; Uncertainty Files; Cold
Cuts; Doch An Doris; Word For Word; Sex &
God;Love and Fascism, a co-written play for
Galata Perfrom, Istanbul 2014 and 2015; and Every Five
Minutes, winner of the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for Best
Original Play, 2014-15.

Other translations include Spanish, Turkish, Polish, Macedonian
and Greek. Linda adapted Like Water for
Chocolate, from the novel by Laura Esquivel, which was
translated into Spanish; Olga from the Finnish
play by Laura Ruohonen; and Le Problem, from the
French play by Francois Begadeau.

Linda has written plays for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Scotland,
including Zombie Rule Number 9 in 2013.

She has worked for the British Council in Mexico City,
Teluca and Bogota. In 2009, she delivered the keynote speech
to the Playwrights' Guild of Canada.

Linda was the Creative Fellow
at Edinburgh University's Institute of Advanced
Studies in Humanities in 2011, where she and the late
Professor Susan Manning published their Conversation:
Gathering Uncertainties.

She has also served on the Artistic Board of Magic Theatre
Company, San Francisco.

Recently, Linda has been writing a comedy for Magic, a new play
called Thingumy Bob for Lung Has, and a Breakfast Play for
the Traverse Theatre's Festival programme.